Electronic mail (“e-mail”) messages may be encoded using one of a number of known protocols. Some of these protocols, such as Secure Multiple Internet Mail Extensions (“S/MIME”) for example, rely on public and private encryption keys to provide confidentiality and integrity, and on a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to communicate information that provides authentication and authorization. Data encrypted using a private key of a private key/public key pair can only be decrypted using the corresponding public key of the pair, and vice-versa. The authenticity of public keys used in the encoding of messages is validated using certificates. In particular, if a user of a computing device wishes to encrypt a message before the message is sent to a particular individual, the user will require a certificate for that individual. That certificate will typically comprise the public key of the individual, as well as other identification-related information.
If the requisite certificate for the intended recipient is not already stored on the user's computing device, the certificate must first be retrieved. Searching for and retrieving a certificate for a specific recipient is a process that generally involves querying a certificate server by having the user manually enter the name and/or e-mail address of the intended recipient in a search form displayed on the computing device. Certificates located in the search are then temporarily downloaded to the computing device for consideration, and a list of located certificates may be displayed to the user. Selected certificates in the list may then be manually identified by a user for storage in a non-volatile store of the computing device, for potential future use.
Many organizations set up their own certificate servers that contain all of the certificates that have been issued to people in the organization who are able to send and receive encoded messages. If, for example, an individual in one organization wishes to communicate with other individuals in another organization using encoded messages, the certificates issued to those other individuals will need to be obtained. Furthermore, additional certificates may also be needed to verify the authenticity or validity of the certificates issued to those individuals. Manually searching for certificates, as they become needed, can be inconvenient and time-consuming. Manual searching for certificates may be particularly cumbersome if the computing device on which the certificate searches are initiated is small in size (e.g. a mobile device).